Update on John Gambanga

02 Apr 2016

John Gambanga

Wordsmiths master as many genres and media as they have talents. For forty years, John Gambanga has been a novelist, playwright, journalist, editor, and videographer.

Since 1980, Gambanga has mainly worked as a journalist in Zimbabwe. He worked for Moto, the Catholic weekly famously bombed just before the 1980 elections. Later, he joined ZBC and then the Herald. In 1986, he spent a year at Stanford University doing a diploma in Media Studies. He edited the Manica Post for nine years, before joining the Daily News before its banning in 2003.

Gambanga is now a Media Consultant in Zimbabwe, working in both old and new media. He trains journalists and information officers in basic newswriting and press releases and also conducts workshops on public relations as well as staging PR events. He also creates video-documentary productions for NGO’s embassies and the corporate world.

ZimbabweReads knows him best because, at the beginning of his career, Gambanga published two novels and one play in Shona: Tichaona (1976), Manakira Kure (1983), and Mari Ine Chitema (1981).

Because his books are out of print (and he hasn’t received any royalties since 1991), John Gambanga is now generously putting the texts online here: